International feminists and hijakijing of post-conflict recovery

International journalists and media persons are having their field day after the election of Liberia`s female President. This event was truly a windfall for feminist journalist who were dying for a news that will carry their agenda. They are now racing each other to put bigger coverage in their respective media outlet about this Liberian President and the issue of women`s political participation in Africa.

Here, again, the increasingly finer line between objective reporting and advocacy reporting is blurred. The media insinuates that the entire African continent, or even the entire world, is buzzing with hope for the female president, but is it just progressive western journalists or militant feminist circles in Africa buzzing with expectations?

As the author pointed out, some countries in Africa has the highest proportion of women in parliament in the world. But this is mainly due to peculiar circumstances in such countries. According to the author again, much of the male populations were slaughtered in Rwanda, leaving much less men alive than women when the conflict was over and a time to form a new government.

While most people, who have at least a shred of humanity, would feel this as a tragedy of gigantic proportion, but not militant feminists. Many local feminist organizations, aided and abetted, or sometimes set up by their western sisters, saw this as an "opportunity" to increase their voice in politics and boy they did seized the "opportunity"

Inspired by western gender feminists and international organizations, most notably the United Nations, the concept of "gender quota" which remains a controversial concept to say the least in western democracies, was presented as though it is a "world standard" and before men, yet to recover from the atrocity of genocide which mainly targeted them, could see what`s really behind it, was sneakly written into constitutions.

This in tern gives western feminist new ammunition in their eternal fight to introduce gender quota in their home countries. Now they could say, "Look, even Rwanda of all countries has higher number of women in parliament than us. Aren`t you ashamed? Why are we behind them in women`s political participation? What can we do to redress the problem?" and, "Rwanda has seen a remarkable progress since the end of conflict...it`s all because of gender quota!...let`s do in our country too, whoa!" The second kind of argument would naturally be accompanied by phony, selective, and manipulated data that is supposed to back up their self-serving claims.

Not only Rwandan men were butchered in thousands during the conflict, their plight was sometimes regarded by feminists as "men`s problem", meaning, men are killing other men and each other and is thus just their own problem. Instead of men who are butchered in thousands, feminists have successfully shifted attention of international community to the plight of women, who are raped, beaten, or became widows and had to raise family by themselves.

Thus men in Rwanda or other African countries affected by conflicts are doubly victimized or discriminated. First, during the conflict, they are the one who bear the majority of the blunt. Second, when the conflict ends and the society heads to recovery, most of the attention would be placed on women; increase women in power, empowerment of female victim of conflict of widows, economical empowerment of women - at the expense of ignoring the plight of men.

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